The curriculum is at the heart of the education we offer. The world is a demanding place and it is essential that all children are encouraged to use all their abilities as fully as they can to enable them to cope with its myriad challenges.
Our curriculum’s central aim is to lay the foundations for future learning. We hope to engender a life-long love of learning, based on the stimulation of every pupil’s intellectual curiosity. We aim to provide our pupils with the knowledge, skills and attitudes they will need both for the next stage of their education and for the challenges of life in the twenty-first century.
We see the curriculum as a continuum from the earliest years of a pupil’s time in Bankfield to the completion of Sixth Form courses at the age of eighteen. We treat all our pupils as individuals throughout their time in the School. We have no doubt that girls who join our School early in their education and journey through into our single sex, day/boarding section for their secondary education will gain most from what we offer. Equally, the boys who leave at eleven will be well-prepared for the next stage of their school careers.
We are acutely aware that successful learners are happy and fulfilled people who have a wide range of opportunities and who enjoy encouragement and support. Our curriculum sets out to inspire, first and foremost, the right attitudes towards learning. Those who want to learn because they enjoy learning and see intrinsic value in it will gain real success.
As an independent school, we are not obliged to follow the National Curriculum to the letter. Instead, we adapt and go beyond it so that our pupils are provided with the academic wherewithal to fulfil their aspirations.
We keep our curriculum as broad as possible for as long as possible. There is always a tension between breadth and depth of learning, but we feel that it is important to ensure that our younger pupils’ options are kept open. The English school system requires pupils to make choices, but we aim to minimise this requirement until the age of fourteen.
Bankfield, our pre-prep section, builds the basis of future academic skills by creating an environment which imbues confidence and provides each child with a level of challenge appropriate to her or his needs.
Highfield, our prep school, develops children’s abilities so that by the age of 11 they will have both the fundamental mathematical and English skills and the wider interests to enable them to take full advantage of a broad and demanding secondary education.
College, our 11-18 girls’ only day/boarding section, enables our girls to develop real academic abilities in a broad range of subjects, so that they can do well in the qualifying examinations of GCSE and A Level. Thereafter, they are in a position to go on to pursue whatever options are within their compass. Ultimately, HLC’s curriculum enables our pupils to have choices.